Additionally, all IDA Country Partnership Frameworks are required to incorporate climate and disaster risk considerations into the analysis of a country’s development challenges and priorities and, when agreed with the country, incorporate such considerations into the content of the programs and the results framework.This is a major step forward in helping the poor and most vulnerable, those most at risk from climate change, prepare for the impacts of our rapidly warming world.

Bank staff can now access a new suite of online tools to help them identify potential risks to the projects and country plans they’re working on.

The new climate and disaster risk screening tools are exactly what they sound like: they provide due diligence at the early stages of project design to ensure that climate and disaster risks are flagged. Screening is a first, but essential, step to make sure that these risks are assessed and managed as we work on climate and disaster-resilient development.

It’s increasing clear that to end extreme poverty, we have to build resilient communities and mitigate shocks, like climate and natural disasters.

Over the last 30 years, the world has lost more than 2.5 million people and almost $4 trillion to natural disasters.

As more and more people move to cities built on flood plains and along coastlines in search of jobs and opportunities these trends will continue to rise. While all countries are impacted, developing nations bear the brunt of mounting losses in lives and livelihoods from increasingly severe floods, droughts, and storms.

The climate and disaster risk tools are aligned with, and provide contributions to, the new operations risk management approach being introduced at the Bank. They have benefited during the design, internal piloting and testing from the involvement of regional and thematic specialists across the Bank. Also, IFC is piloting a climate risk management process that will be used to identify and manage climate risks related to investments’ financial, environmental and social performance.

Consultation on the new screening tools has included outside stakeholders such as regional development banks and other development partners that are in the process of developing or deploying similar screening tools and resources.

Going forward, the tools will continue to be refined and enhanced to support risk assessment at the country level as new and improved data becomes available later over the coming year.

All of this will help us better predict and prepare for risk, allowing nations and communities to build the capacity they need to grow resilient, and to put in place response measures in a warming and more disruptive climate.

This is a great development. The Pakistan CPF process concluded not so long ago could definitely have benefited from the use of these tools. How are we planning on incorporating these considerations into lending policy at national level outside of the CPF cycle?

Pakistan is an IDA country, and as such all new IDA-17 supported investments that come for concept approval from July 1, 2014 will need to be screened for climate and disaster risks. Hence, there is an opportunity for teams to use these screening tools as part of this early stage due diligence. Good to see that the Pakistan recognizes the challenge posed by climate change, and that it includes a provision for some action on this front, including analytical work.

Great! Yes, building on top of the allusions to the need for preparedness in country documents, these tools will definitely help push the case for incorporation of these considerations into planning at all levels of operation.

Dear Michael,
Thank you for your interest. The tools are in use right now within the World Bank Group and are being refined with additional data. We hope to have a version ready for public release in early 2015.